Our Groovy Festival of Hate

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[Part III, Freedomworks' Adworks will follow in the early week. The Fort Hood tragedy is an important event, whether we take the right path, or the disastrous path in its aftermath -- HW].

slick anti-Muslim propaganda

This is a special day for imbeciles, droolers, morons, haters and Michelle Malkin (who neatly encompasses all of the aforementioned demographics).

So, let’s go back to where it all went wrong.

Nine Eleven.

And the New York Media’s shock and horror at, literally, an attack on America. Because, as we’ve learned, New York is to the USA what the large city that dominates your state is to the rest of the state. You know: Atlanta is to Georgia, as Albuquerque is to New Mexico; Boston is to Massachusetts as  Denver is to Colorado, as Chicago is to Illinois, as Little Rock is to Arkansas, etc.*

[* Yes, we have a few "two city" states, like California with its Southern and Northern megalopoli, or Texas with its Dallas-Fort Worth megalopolis and its southern Houston megalopolis, or Missouri, with its Kansas City/St. Louis "I-70" megalopoli -- a megalopolis is defined as that huge patch of light on the night satellite photo, irrespective of political divisions.]

We were attacked by political/religious terrorists; worse, as we later learned, we had paid to train them in the Afghan-Soviet War of the ’70s and ’80s. In an alternate universe, had the Cold War gone the other way, the Soviet Union would have rushed to occupy Vietnam, never understanding that it was a war of NATIONALISM, as we rushed our NATO allies into Afghanistan and were  then diverted to Iraq.

But we’re getting ahead of the story.

In the hours after the attack, rage and grief imprinted all who watched the television, the Towers collapsing again and again, over and over, in slow motion.

(Oh yeah, the Pentagon was attacked too, but hey, NEW YORK was attacked.)

In terms of actual damage, 3,000 had been killed in a nation of 300,000,000, or 0.0001 of the population. Several buildings had collapsed. But the damage to AMERICA was minimal.

And a lot of hate memes were launched, blaming all Muslims and all Arabs, and all “Jihadists,” which has become the variable term in hate rhetoric replacing “Jews” in early National Socialist scapegoating politics.

We held NATIONS responsible for Nine-Eleven, and lashed out at entire NATIONS.

[Instead of holding CRIMINALS responsible for Nine-Eleven, and pursuing them AS criminals, as, say the Israeli Mossad pursued the Munich Olympics terrorists.]

Instead, we have slaughtered and raged across half the globe.

I really don’t care how fucking tragic Nine Eleven was for you, if the consequent deaths of (I’ll lowball the hell out of it) 300,000 OTHER innocent human beings of all nationalities and the deaths of more than 4,000 of OUR troops — which comprise Americans of ALL nationalities — isn’t equally tragic to you. They had moms, dads, sisters, brothers, friends and neighbors, too. Their pain is no LESS than yours.

Even by Hammurabi’s terms, that was harsh.

That’s a thousand eyes for an eye and a thousand teeth for a tooth.

Kind of like, say, a village for an eye and a city for a tooth.

There is no moral system in existence that can justify such behavior as anything other than monstrous. Sorry. Kind of spits in the face of  “all persons are created equal” doesn’t it?

Whoever did this had undoubtedly
justified it to themselves as “moral,” too

And consider the misery that WE have inflicted — for instance, on a HOT nation of 30 million that had its electricity (and, consequently, its air-conditioning) go out back in 2003. And on our troops, who we have sent there.

No one has really spoken about the religious bigotry and racism that’s run wild in this country SINCE 9-11. Not in a meaningful way.

Both of these wars were wrong. We acted in haste and repent in leisure. But our “pride” our national “face” is so weak and pusillanimous that we will not admit to making a mistake and withdrawing.

The wave of “AHA! I TOLD you so!” in the first fifteen minutes of the Fort Hood shootings clearly indicated that minds had readily accepted a reality untethered to facts. If there is any historical lesson that is more plain, it is that rushing to judgment is a prescription for disaster (like, say, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction” and “mushroom cloud.”)

With the technology of 2010 and the paranoia of 2001, this nation can and perhaps inevitably will become Orwell’s “1984″ on steroids.

The big part of 1984 that Orwell missed was that Big Brother can be immensely entertaining. He can traverse the nation like Puck in a 747, putting on photo festivals on aircraft carriers, and in the secure downtown park of a ruined city, framed by a lighted cathedral and an equestrian statue of a famed hero of that drowned, ruined city.

It always starts with seeding the hatred, and that requires a scapegoat.

Does it never occur to these haters, these Malkins, these little Evas of the End of the Republic that it might well have been their own bigotry, amplified by a culture of Faux and Jeezis (no relation to the various Jesus™ franchisees the world ’round) that sent a devout Muslim over the edge?

Many sick prophecies are self-fulfilling, you know.

You see, we allowed the cardinal rule of our great stereotyping crime (scapegoating) to repeat itself: typify a group by the sins of a few.  A white kid in Omaha gets beat up at the swimming pool by some black kids (or vice versa) and ever after, they’re all “coons” to him, and he’ll tell you that — or even the “N” word of lethal magickal mojo — if he’s sure you’re “one of us” or otherwise trustworthy.

I wish I had a nickel for every politically keereckt Democratic politician who’s used the “C” word in all-male company, as a parallel.

We inveigh against the horrors that this depersonalization creates: the internment of all Japanese on the West Coast in World War II,  the Jim Crow South, the horrible mistreatment of Indians and Chinese, etcetera, etcetera, and somehow manage to eternally botch the answer: this is how large groups always treat smaller groups, with some cultural variants. It doesn’t matter WHICH group characteristic denotes the stronger and weaker.

Many times, outsiders can’t even SEE the difference that is so glaring, so all-encompassing to those locked in the dance of hate.

But we never consider that mechanism that creates niggers and chinks, and wops, and gringos and gooks, and slants and spades, and sand niggers, camel jockeys, jihadists, honkies, hymies, grays, injuns,  spics, krauts, wetbacks, hebes, pollacks, micks, japs, brits, wasps, debs, frat rats, skins, shirts.

Politicians.

It’s just the old pre-reading skill of “making sets.” We’ve just added the fillip of a little Pavlovian hate conditioning, “Those lousy BLANKS.”

We’re going to ring the bell now, Rover

This is a very useful mental skill; but when you start slandering, insulting  jailing and murdering people for their mere membership in a “group” you’ve gone off the rails.

Look: stereotyping and looking for “sets” is fundamental to the way that we think and communicate. The algebraic variable “x” is a pronoun: “them.”

We hate “x” because “y.”

Or, we hate THEM because of WHAT THEY DID.

(Or THINK — which is actually WHAT WE THINK THEY THINK.  A lot of this neo-hate is based on “understanding” the mind of the “enemy” and then why they would hate and want to kill the “understander,”: you know, US.)

Because we humans are multi-faceted beings, and ONE defining characteristic, like, say, pigmentation, or religious affiliation (with the exception of the Thuggee of India), does not a hate target make. Does not a HUMAN make. You can take Karl Rove, for instance. He’s … white, bald, Republican, a pundit, right handed, Type-O blood. Paunchy, portly, plucky, persnickety, pecksniffian, prudish, presumptious and that’s just the ‘P’s. An American, a westerner, a Fox News talking head, an idiot, an asshole, a mayberry machiavelli, and so on and so forth.

Which “x” do you select as the DEFININING characteristic, or can y0u just decide that Karl Rove is deserving of a specific opinion and response to just Karl Rove. No generalization here.

We must NEVER go to war in the general against a crime in the specific. We must never HATE in general because of assholishness and dumbassitude in the specific.

If you have a Nine Eleven, you bring Osama bin Laden to Justice. Perhaps that means put him to death. No problem. But you don’t HATE ONE BILLION human beings. That’s just idiotic. Acts of revenge and retaliation, no matter how un-Christian, must take place only in the specific and not the general.

If you go into business with some one, and he robs your business blind, sleeps with your wife and steals your car, sure, go ahead and hate that ONE.

But don’t decide that he was

• left-handed*
  therefore all left-handers do these things
• bald
  therefore all bald persons do these things
• hemorrhoidal
  therefore all assholes …
• short
  therefore all short …
• very light-skinned
  therefore all …
• an albino
  therefore …

You get the idea.

[* And note: AS a left-hander, might I point out that bigotry and discrimination have been the rule throughout history, up to and including that it is STILL considered gauche and even sinister to eat, in many Middle Eastern countries, with ONE'S LEFT HAND! The left hand is for wiping one's ass. Gee. Thanks. OK: according to many, eating with the left hand is FORBIDDEN by Islam. Nonetheless, I do not want to harm all Muslims.]

But there are ONE BILLION (imagine ‘BILL-ion” spoken in the best Carl Sagan voicing) followers of Islam in the world. And a bunch of idjits are basically stirring up a major beef with ALL of those billion. Already, around the world and especially in the United States, we have a large and growing population of Ay-rab and Moo-slum haters who’ve never actually interacted with one of either.

Not just in the USA, either

Which is so goddamned DUMB that the monkeys must be laughing at us, watching us flinging OUR feces for a change.

There are some people who hate us. Hey: it happens to Cher. She deals with it. You want to fight something? Fight hate. (But not WITH hate. That never works.)

We, it seems, invade multiple countries in the Middle East, and then, having not done what we invaded for, decide to spread the “blessing” of our ideology ["democracy" slash "free market capitalism" in this case], as though we were Che Guevara in a Cadillac.

Forgetting that a democratic republic has been a good idea for US only because, until recently, we had an educated and self-empowered citizenry who could make a democratic republic work*. “Democratic” because it is the rule of the people, “Republic” because we created institutional brakes to avoid the horror that was later seen in the French Revolution: rule by the mindless mob.

[* "Democracy" is not a panacea, nor is it right for all peoples in all places at all times, and it is arrogant to believe so. Just as arrogant as the Soviets' monstrous presumption that Soviet-style communism would be a good fit in Afghanistan. It is our arrogance that has led us to the gates of disaster. A little humility would be most welcome at this moment of history. Hell, we live in a country whose inhabitants don't even seem to understand WHY our President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The rest of the world seems to.]

And the funny thing is, if the mindless mob become angry enough, if they HATE the scapegoat enough, all of those “Republic” brakes fail, and we teeter at the edge of dictatorship. As Germany found out in the 1930s, and America found out in the first decade of the Twenty First Century.

But remember this, my fellow citizens: If we do nothing about two unlawful wars, dictatorial powers, claims of nearly unlimited power (and their consequent abuse), torture, rendition and the rest of it, we guarantee that someone MORE unscrupulous WILL end this republic once and for all.*

[* Because there is no downside to usurpation. And, if our leaders do not obey the laws, why the HELL should we? Increasingly, we don't.]

Don’t worry. We don’t even notice it.

When Augustus became emperor, the Roman Senate continued as an institution for centuries, weakening, and engaging in ever more ceremonial and impotent business. The populi never noticed that the republic had vanished. Life didn’t change on the streets. Heck, it even mellowed out, after the long civil wars of the two triumvirates. Augustus made the Roman equivalent of the trains run on time, and two centuries of “Pax Romana” ensued.

But the republic was dead.

The emperor Caligula had so much contempt for the Senate that he had his horse made a senator.

We have Sarah Palin.

Courage.

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